Dolor
by prosemeds
Summary: "I remember crying over you and I don't mean a couple of tears and I'm blue. I'm talking about collapsing and screaming at the moon." For the Castle fanfiction Challenge. "I'm in pain."
"I remember crying over you and I don't mean a couple of tears and I'm blue. I'm talking about collapsing and screaming at the moon."

* * *

It's been…twenty days.

Twenty.

Twenty days of silence, of barely sleeping. Of pouring hour to hour until after dark at the precinct, sifting for new leads and revisiting dead ones.

Many, many meals of coffee, sometimes the occasional scotch, but mostly black coffee, black.

Twenty days with one step forward and five steps back. A hasty pace, a race, and he's winded, heaving and aching for the needles in his chest. For empty hands each day.

Twenty days of the gunshot.

Twenty days trying to extract the missing answer in his vision of that day, piecing the story he's rewritten already a thousand times – the only thing he's been able to write. The story he's lived in for three weeks, her body in his grip like a phantom now, her blood still cooling on his fingers. Her breaths stuttering, his voice playing over the scene he can barely make through without curling his fists.

 _I love you._

Twenty days without her.

Twenty days in pain.

The weight of it all crashes down when he arrives home, just like every night, weights hanging along his shoulders as he slugs towards the kitchen to pick off whatever leftovers the girls have left for him. Snacking just enough, he seeks his bed, gaze glued to the floor only until a voice yanks his face upward.

"Richard."

His steps stick, a startled and sloppy halt when he greets his mother seated at his desk chair. She wears the same creases of concern, the same sympathy shot his way. It hasn't changed. Not for weeks.

Nothing has, except the pain.

"You've gotta stop this," she continues, a low roll, a maternal pleading in the undertone. "It's not healthy, kiddo."

"Mother, I'm fine," he says. She doesn't blink, expression stilled as his shifts. _Stop lying to me_ , her eyes seem to lecture. "I just wanna get this guy," he reasons.

"I know. So you've said," she says getting up, nearing him. "But is this the way to do it?"

"What do you mean?"

She smiles, a lame attempt at levity as it contrasts the deep furrow of her brows. "You're punishing yourself."

"I'm…in pain," he argues. "For her, for all of this. I can still hear her flatlining in that ambulance. She's my partner, of course I'm doubling efforts here. I'm gonna feel some strain doing it."

"You think you're doubling your efforts. Eager and determined to find the shooter, yes, you are, but I look at you and it–" She cuts off just as her voice cracks. "I just sit back, but I can't bear to look at you in this…shadow of guilt you seem to walk in every day."

He returns an even, practiced smile, barely spreading his lips to the lengths of joy it's known before. "I'm not punishing myself–" he dismisses, bowing his head. When he starts to speak on her hands cradle his face, and it's like being a boy again, looking up into her eyes for relief, but he discovers the gleam in them. A broken sparkle.

"This is not your fault," she stresses, her confidence faltering as she struggles to assure him.

When her hands fall to rest atop his shoulders he turns away to shake this off, clearing his throat before he returns to her. "I don't believe that."

"Why?"

After a hard swallow, he roots his eyes to focus, negative energy swirling out of them, out of his mouth in a fierce fervor. "Because I was too stubborn to listen to her. Right from the start, pushing her to investigate and stepping where I shouldn't have, convincing her we could do this–"

" _Richard_ –"

"–What–what if that's why she hasn't called? What if she believes that?"

"No–how could you think that?" she spits, her fingers falling to clasp around his hands. "How could you ever think that of Katherine?"

"Story dictates that there is an antagonist–" he mumbles, "And it's me. Because I set this in motion. I did this to her."

He pulls away without further argument, catching his mother's sigh as he strides into his room and into the bathroom. Both hands clutch the sides of the sink bowl as he studies his reflection.

Coonan, dead. Lockwood, dead. Montgomery, dead.

 _You did this._

Where do they go from here?

 _Find him._

"I'm sorry," he breathes, glancing at the window into the moonlight, opting for apologies to suffocate the screams of his soul lashing out. "I'm so sorry, Kate."

* * *

 _No. No. Stop._

 _Stop._

She wakes despite desperate efforts to stay asleep, a stabbing in her side dragging her back to consciousness. Her head rolls to check the clock at the bedside.

Five minutes. Five fucking minutes. No sleep tonight it seems.

It's nothing new, exactly what every night has been like.

But of course she's back to living _it_. Again. Trapped in the loop of the nightmare that consumes her, sleeping or not.

Tempted to move, to leave the sheets, she sits up first, steady to ensure she doesn't rush her wounds' compliance and risk tearing anything. She props herself against the wall, leaning slow, wary of her every inhale and exhale.

Her temple grates along the wood, trying to draw her focus away from the retched pulse all over her body. It's poison coursing through her, destroying her veins, every part of her numb.

Numb. But not nearly enough.

Her teeth grind as both hands ease over her bandages to remedy the soreness. It reminds her…how he held her. How he had held on. Feeling his hand laced with hers even once his eyes disappeared. Like a dream.

Like they were in the dark and he was leading her home.

 _I love you, Kate,_ she hears.

The air stills. So does she.

The bullet. The blood.

The series of events arrive in flashes. Crisp. Vibrant. More so than what lies before her, as if she's damned in another reality. One where moving forward means you replay. Where she drains, dies, and says her silent goodbye to Castle. Then repeat.

And repeat.

The moonlight beats down on her from the window, splitting gray clouds that cried the whole day. It's the first light she's seen in a few days, now intervening her rumination. It swallows the thick shadows cast upon her walls.

The center appears to collect the most light. Solidifying it, a figure. That's when he appears, a mist in the middle of the room. Grinning.

"I love you," the figure says to her.

"Castle…" she mutters, sucking in a breath like a punch to the chest. For a moment she can't get a handle on her lungs, trembling at her core as she remembers all the wrong things.

 _We are over. Now get out._

 _Don't leave me._

Gunshot.

Sweat breaks out as she tumbles in reflex, taking the blankets with her, tangled as she lands flat on her knees, grunting.

"Ugh–damn it," she gasps, panting as the pain rips her from the memory. Tears streak through the sweat filming on her cheeks, her hand raking up over her skin and into her hair as she grabs the bed for support, trying to stand.

And then her heart screams, begging for mercy, for release as she collapses under the power of her wounds, wrought under their control. Her fingers claw at the sheets, mouth gaping as she sobs in silence. And then she hears him, calling her to hold on. _Stay with me, Kate._

This is nothing new.

Almost three weeks in this pain despite the drugs, a tolerance she hates herself for.

Twenty days surviving, surviving the day and night. Living with the bullet penetrating her chest over and over and over.

Twenty days of questions, of why's. Why did this happen. How's, who's. When's, when, when will she get better, when can she be okay. When can she just go home. When will she accept the night in the hangar. That Montgomery is gone. When will she be convinced that it's not her fault. That Castle was right to save her, to protect her.

Twenty days of no answers.

Twenty days of dying. Of standing at the edge, waiting for the next attack. Of forgetting. Trying to.

Twenty days of Castle's face. Dreaming of it. Of his shaky breath washing over her lips. His eyes begging, her body remembering his reverence for her, his hold so caring.

Twenty days of fighting with herself, fighting not to call, not to think of him. To stop reliving the moment.

Twenty days of still hearing _I love you_.

And of wishing she knew how to tell him too.


End file.
